Blog about ideas, concepts, things and people, that excite me.
Caution, overwhelming number of superlatives ahead.

Radioactive Bananas, and You

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I’m in fact quite saddened by all the worldwide radiophobia that escalated after the Fukushima incident. How can it be any good when even the Germans are making the populist move of shutting down their clean, efficient and cheap nuclear plants?

Meanwhile, friendly, organic and sweet good guys bananas, loved by every fundamental environmentalist out there, seem to be safe despite being one of the few significantly radioactive biological substances due to their potassium contents.

But wait, what else does contain potassium? You. So you are radioactive too. Cool, huh?

For me, [not having children] — that’s a continuity of how the Nazis thought — that everything is defined by bloodlines. Genes aren’t everything. You can always make your own decisions.

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10 questions for Katrin Himmler in the Time magazine, short interview I just read about how Himmler’s grandniece struggled to deal with her granduncle’s nefariously inhumane crimes

I’m not just very happy, heartened and uplifted to read Katrin saying that, I also feel like it’s one of my core beliefs: your will is greater than any forces of your nature; your and everyone’s mind is capable of overcoming anything imposed on you by your initial social and genetic background.

It really strikes a chord because Nature versus nurture debate in one of traditional ones in a home where I grew up. The sort of debate that locks horns, and the one every question comes down to. I don’t think of it as of a false dichotomy, rather as of a determination that helps me to keep trying harder and harder every day. Genes aren’t much at all.

Pinterest

Over the last couple of months I got seriously hooked up on Pinterest.

It’s quite a clever tool when used wisely; not only for collecting images but as a community, for, say, discovering nice people with similar tastes and looking up what visuals are trending now.

The most popular board of mine so far, and probably the one I’m most excited about is Russian Avantgarde. Seriously stunning. A material for tens of other blog posts right there.

I’ve just finished another brilliant Coursera course, Think Again: How to Reason and Argue. I’m certain it’s going to be offered again next academic year, and I recommend it strongly.

It could seem easy just from the look of it, and, in fact, it probably is one of the most undemanding informal logic courses out there, but man, could I get any more excited to finally grasp all those corellations & causations, probabilities, truth tables and venn diagrams that thrilled me as long as I can remember? Amazing! I love you all! You all are awesome!

Over-Sharing for the Intelligence Workers

People enjoy openness. They like being able to tell the truth, engage in honest communications, build non-lurking relationships. Social networking success leaves no doubt they also like the whole world to know what they do.

These are one of the most wildly amusing news I’ve ever read: Washington post reports Belgian high-profile intelligence workers who tried to openly list their workplaces on Facebook and LinkedIn. According to the paper, quick search for CIA employees reveals, in particular, “one woman, a self-identified intelligence analyst at U.S. Central Command in Florida, <who> lists ‘national security’ and ‘counterterrorism’ among her skills — she has peer endorsements in both.” Awesome.

If you are feeling a bit down (for whatever reason) or are particularly touchy on subject of climate change, oil spills, dead whales, Gaza fire, Spain bankruptcy, American debt or Bradley Manning, you should watch this 15-minute-long video. It doesn’t prevent ice from melting, make palestinians more forgiving or anything, but rather points a reasonable finger at something else.

In short: guy with capt. Spock action figure behind his back, Peter Diamandis, recaps his book ‘Abundance. Why the future is better than you think’, which talks about rapid technology growth, our generation’s extraordinary connectedness, massive life quality raise, newfound social consciousness and what’s next. Sit back and start feeling excited.

TED Education, Animated

You’ve got to admit Google did great with their YouTube ad placement programmes — it’s exciting how lots of people now are able to promote their content and even make a living with filming short homemade clips (although no advertising for me, please… oh thank you, mobile apps!).

The most enjoyable part of YouTube for me are not vlogs, but educational video. There is pure gold out there, and now it is flourishing like never before. Amazing trend.

Last week I discovered TEDEd channel and I’ve been happy ever since. It’s just brilliant. Ancient Rome teens, how we breathe and even urban animals evolution, all gorgeously animated and narrated. The opposite of boring.

100 Ideas Book Series

Very anxiously I can’t wait to lay my hands and eyes on these promising series, ‘100 Ideas that changed…’, published this year by Laurence King. All designed by Pentagram, all organised chronologically as a list of stories on innovative & groundbreaking concepts, but all written by well-respected critics in the field of each of the selected disciplines. Really good feeling about those. So I decided I want them all, and I want them all immediately, and I want time to read them all immediately.

But for now I’m reading stunning Maria Popova’s reviews (and more reviews) trying to hold on a little longer. Good thing for those who are already on the verge of winter holidays.

Ooh these cute tiny carbon-based lifeforms, they are developing fast, aren’t they? Took them some time to get out of the ocean and grow a consciousness, but they catched up on the fact that all the world does not revolve around them extremely fast.

(Flat Earth Society is a real thing, by the way, but that shouldn’t let you down. As a civilisation we are still pretty exciting.)

Dries Van Noten + Job Wouters

In the FW 2012–13 season Dries Van Noten (whom I’d always loved) men’s is simply the best. The main theme of his collection are patterns and prints based on vibrant and recognisable letterings.

Lettering is the fundamental basis of these garments; everything else just sets the scene; it’s so important for the whole brand image that since I’ve seen it I kept assuming it was an in-house work.

Until I knew it wasn’t. An amazing, amazing dutch lettering artist Job Wouters did this, and this exciting animated style is no less than his own. Now I’m so much in love with it. Effortlessly raw and cool. Extremely rare.

See more on Sartorialist or Vogue.

(And whoa these shoes.)

Image courtesy: 1, 2